Hi Alex, mine might be a minority view/request, but I think RPython is an interesting and useful language in its own right and should be standardized and highlighted. Possibly separated out with a website of its own to emphasize its existence.
When I write Python it is rarely the case that I assign values of different types to the same identifier, or add attributes to a class outside of its definition, or monkey patch a module. In other words most of the time I am not really making use of the dynamic properties of the language. In this scenario Python is a language that saves me "finger typing", and I do not needs its dynamic typing as much. I am more than willing, in these scenarios, to trade some of that unused dynamism for better performance. I think there might be others who are similarly inclined.
The one thing that I miss in RPython is generators. Is there a particular difficulty because of which it was left out ? I assume so, because all the statically typed variants of Python leave it out as well, but I do not have enough background to know what that difficulty might be. The other is Numpy :) but I believe you guys are working on that.
@wbhart A lot of what you ask is answered in some detail in the PyPy blog http://morepypy.blogspot.com/ I wouldnt call PyPy less well known though.
I'd like to second this request, I would be more than happy to write code in a slightly more restricted way if it meant that I could generate C-fast modules from Python code. In my opinion, RPython is an even bigger deal than PyPy, as it's a very easy way to get C speed with Python syntax.
I have no idea why they haven't given the compiler some love so we can use it for our own projects. It sounds like it would become ubiquitous very, very fast.
Generators probably need to be efficiently inlined to be fast? Maybe this depends on the capabilities of the VM. I think they can also be implemented with continuations which few languages implement due to being a headscrew. I'm just guessing though. I'd be interested in hearing an authoritative answer.
I fully agree re the highlighting and standardizing RPython.
When I write Python it is rarely the case that I assign values of different types to the same identifier, or add attributes to a class outside of its definition, or monkey patch a module. In other words most of the time I am not really making use of the dynamic properties of the language. In this scenario Python is a language that saves me "finger typing", and I do not needs its dynamic typing as much. I am more than willing, in these scenarios, to trade some of that unused dynamism for better performance. I think there might be others who are similarly inclined.
The one thing that I miss in RPython is generators. Is there a particular difficulty because of which it was left out ? I assume so, because all the statically typed variants of Python leave it out as well, but I do not have enough background to know what that difficulty might be. The other is Numpy :) but I believe you guys are working on that.
@wbhart A lot of what you ask is answered in some detail in the PyPy blog http://morepypy.blogspot.com/ I wouldnt call PyPy less well known though.